Google keeps reminding us about the important events and birthdays of people through Google Doodle. Today is also one of those days. Google is celebrating the life of Marie Tharp who was an American geologist and oceanographic cartographer. He had helped prove the theories of continental drift and Google is honouring his achievements by launching a Google Doodle.
You will see a special animated Doodle that features an interactive exploration of Tharp's achievements in mapping the oceans. Marie Tharp co-published the first world map of ocean floors and it was on 21 November 1998 that the Library of Congress named her as one of the greatest cartographers of the 20th century. She was born on 19 July 1920, in Ypsilanti in Michigan state of United States.
The story of Marie Tharp is being narrated by Caitlyn Larsen, Rebecca Nesel, and Dr. Tiara Moore in today's google doodle. These are the three notable women that are currently living out Tharp’s legacy and making strides in the traditionally male-dominated ocean science and geology spaces.
It was Marie Tharp's father who was responsible for introducing her to mapmaking though was a worker at the U.S Department of Agriculture. Tharp had gone to the University of Michigan for her master’s degree in where she had pursued petroleum geology, an impressive course for a woman of those times sine very few women worked in science during that period. She moved to New York City in 1948 and was the first woman to work at the Lamont Geological Observatory where she met geologist Bruce Heezen.
Tharp created the maps of the ocean floors with the help of ocean-depth data gathered by Heezen in the Atlantic Ocean. Tharp donated her entire map collection to the Library of Congress in 1995 and it was on the 100th-anniversary celebration of its Geography and Map Division that the Library of Congress named her one of the most important cartographers of the 20th century.
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